Don't get me wrong. This site's dunking culture is good and it serves an important purpose. It's an immune system that stops bad-faith trolls and fascists from getting a foot in the door. Just like a biological immune system, though, it can get overactive and start attacking its own body. This is called an autoimmune disease and it can severely damage or even kill its host body.
What's appropriate for a lib or a fascist who refuses to even consider whether they might be wrong about our fundamental ideas isn't appropriate for a comrade who, in good faith, is voicing an opinion you happen to disagree with. This is very similar to something Mao talks about in his essay "On The Correct Handling Of Contradictions Among The People." Mao's essay splits contradictions into two types:
- Antagonistic contradictions are those between class and political opponents with irreconcilable interests. There's no real debate to be had here. They're enemies. You don't engage in dialog with them. You defeat them.
- Non-antagonistic contradictions are those that occur within a class or movement. The interests of all involved are fundamentally aligned, but there's disagreement on how to advance those interests. These disagreements are resolved through discussion that improves mutual understanding and allows for arrival at a consensus.
Applying the analogy to posting on Hexbear:
- Antagonistic contradiction: A chud wanders in to lecture the site about how Stalin killed 50 quintillion people / Hamas is an evil terrorist group / the transes are corrupting the youth. You can't convince these people and it's not worth trying. Post dunks, express hostility, drive them off. That's community hygiene.
- Non-antagonistic contradiction: A comrade who's been on this site for years voices a concern that you posted something bigoted / disagrees with your interpretation of a work of media / advocates engaging with people politically in a way you don't consider effective. You both want communism, you are both anti-imperialist, you both want Hexbear to be a welcoming space for marginalized people. Good-faith dialogue is a way to share information and enhance mutual understanding. Responding to these people with insults and dunks just pisses them off and discourages them or anyone watching from engaging with the site except to post their own insults and dunks. The site becomes more toxic and hostile.
I agree with where you are coming from, but from a veteran user standpoint, the "friendly fire" aspect can hit deep.
A sustainable community does need to have a way of bringing in new users though, and those people won't know as much as we do. Even if they are better read on theory, they aren't going to know the site culture.
I agree that if you can't proudly propagandize people, you are doing something wrong as a socialist. It isn't hard, but this community at large is failing at it, and doing more to propagandize itself than anything else.
It's always a struggle between the old and the news. The ones who accumulated: wealth, knowledge, experience and the ones who just started. The question is where did it come from and where should it go? Is it really worth guarding the sacred trove? Yet if you give it away too easily then you risk making people lazy, at the same time cling onto it too hard and you're gonna spend more time on guarding your wealth than living.
At the end of the day, it's always a class struggle.